Posts Tagged ‘Portrait Photography’

Photographer Andrew Hancock has made his living being on the road and on location. He is always up for the challenge when it comes to finding new exciting places to visit. For most of his trips, Andrew is used to travelling with heavy and bulking equipment. This trip to Island was different. Why? He had brought the new and lightweight Profoto B2 Off-Camera Flash with him.

The trip to the Vatnajökull Glacier wasn’t going to be easy. The weather was brutal with hard winds and shut down roads. But Andrew and his team knew they had to get the shot regardless of the weather.

“I like a proper challenge and I really was curious to see how the B2 would perform in the elements,” writes Andrew on his blog. “Additionally, the windows to shoot the two portraits were the two last shoot days of the trip.”

Kelly Pratt, a husband and wife photographic team, had a vision: A vision of a ballet dancer, straight lines and shadows falling across her body. This vision required a large studio space and great lighting techniques. Luckily they had both.

The team wanted to capture an elegant and modern look and to show off the dancer Vanessa’s grace and strength. With everything they had in mind, they realized that it wouldn’t be easy. First off, to create the lines falling across the wall, they needed to make an 8 foot cookie (a device to cast shadows patterns or silhouettes). They set up their trusted Profoto B1 Off-Camera Flash, and by simply moving it around they were able to change the direction and stretch of the shadows.

To be able to create hard and dramatic shadows they needed to place the flash far away and visualize how the shadows would fall on the dancer. “The modeling light on the B1 was especially helpful for this setup”, writes Kelly.

Stephanie Diani draws inspiration from some of the greatest, most renowned portrait photographers the world has ever known. But rather than recreating their work, she channels the inspiration to create something that is uniquely hers. Here is how she does it.

Meet Stephanie Diani, a portrait photographer born and bred in LA, recently relocated from the sunny west coast to what is possibly the world’s busiest marketplace for photographers: New York City.

Like many other photographers in her generation, Stephanie is mostly self-taught. She looked at classic portraits by auteurs such as of Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Helmut Newton, Alex Webb and Henri Cartier-Bresson. She tried to figure out how they did it, and then she tried to do it herself. Finally, she applied that knowledge to create something uniquely her own.

“Arresting,” says Stephanie. “If I could use only one word to describe what it is I try to achieve, that would be the word – arresting.”

Jeffery Salter is as passionate about his personal projects as he is about his commercial jobs. For this project, for example, he brought two dancers to Bahia Honda Rail Bridge to explore the relationship between people and beautiful architecture.

Jeffery Salter describes his photographic style as “cinematic with a touch of whimsy.” He draws inspiration from surreal artists, mostly painters, and from the cinema. “I keep my eyes open even when I don’t have a camera with me,” he says.

Jeffery, who has travelled the 127 mile long road in the Florida Keys many times, is fascinated by the Key Bridges – a series of bridges which connect the forty-three islands. He had since long wanted to do a personal project about them. Now was the time.

“Its combination of structural strength and graphic lines create a surreal sense of beauty,” replies Jeffery, when asked what is so special about the old Bahia Honda Rail bridge. “It’s magnificent in sheer functionally. You know, it has withstood extreme weather conditions, even hurricanes,” he explains.

The idea behind the project was to put the bridge’s long lasting grandeur and strong graphic lines in contrast with the fleeting moment of grace and soft curves of a dancer. “I wanted to marry the lines in the bridges to the lines of the human form,” he says.